The Past, the Present and the Future...

I've been a very busy boy these days, somehow sneaking in some time on my comics projects while dealling with the important stuff at home. So, I thought I'd tease you all a bit with some of what's coming while explaining how I work.

Let's start with the future: I'm hard at work on two seperate comic projects right now. One involves Creepsville and other things (which I'll get to in a bit here). I thought I'd show you a very early stage in how I work on my comics... from my second project using a name with which I'm going to keep mum about for now.

The panel here will give you an idea how loose my pencils are initially. I prefer that looseness in rendering figures, which I think helps big time in the body language area of my characters. In the panel I'm showing here, I've actually started inking, which is not unusual for me. I ink what I like, what works... and then I may even go back and erase some of the pencils and redo them, changing elements or tightening them up. For example, the camera on the left side will be replaced. This project is a period piece set in the 50s and the camera looks too modern. I need to get some reference and will redraw it.

When I'm finally satisfied with the pencils, I'll ink it in full, erase the pencils and then tighten up with the ink. I don't know if that's normal, but it's how I work.

That same technique was used on the second piece of artwork here, which is a fake cover of a 60s era Brave and the Bold team-up type comic series. This piece and the story it belongs to actually first saw print in Big Bang Comics (#12, I think) published by Image. I'm going to be coloring that whole story for the project that includes Creepsville, which I mentioned earlier. I figured that a lot of you may not have seen this.

Regarding the Monster Patrol, much more lies ahead for them. I have a full comic story finished featuring the origins of this unlikely team as well as a penciled and half-inked follow-up. There's even a short team-up story where the titans momentarily hook up with Greg Hyland's Lethargic Lad that is fully penciled, except for some areas left open for Greg. Gotta get that one done, because not only is it a chance to work with Greg (one of my best buddies in the comics biz), but the story touches upon my affection for the Chicago Cubs. Monsters and the Cubbies? You'll see...